Author of ‘A Girl All Alone Somewhere in the World’, ‘Confessions and Thoughts of a Girl in Turkey’, ‘From Just a Girl Grown Up in America’. (Amazon.com)

Mar 6, 2017

The World Population and Reading

Most of the world’s population don’t read as a hobby. Reading for leisure isn’t prevalent enough in the world. I wish I could encourage more of the population to read more because it feels really good to self-reflect, to reach far and beyond with the imagination, longing, always longing for more exploration of the world; to spend a lot of quiet time alone in order to understand one’s identity, one’s understanding of what one really wants out of life. Most of the world’s population has missed out terribly. I don’t regret all of my time spent on books. I am not closed from the world; when one reads less, one is less open to the world, has less access to it. Maybe people are afraid to find out more about what they are capable of thinking. Maybe they are afraid to discover something true that they have never thought about before which goes against everything they have ever followed. Maybe people are afraid to be apart from the group. Maybe people don’t want to become different from the status quo.

I wish more of the world’s population read more. I wish there were more life-changing conversations. I wish people valued reading more than speaking; reading makes more skillful speakers. Maybe stretching the mind to its full potential is too hard.